Training Categories

14 October 2025

It can be easier to think about training if it is grouped into categories. This can help business to more clearly identify their priorities. Training falls into one of four categories: Onboarding, Regulatory/Compliance, Job-Specific, and Personal/Professional.

Onboarding

This training is a welcome to both the larger organization and the team a new or transferring employee is joining. This starts from the time you make a job posting for an open position, continues through interviewing and offering a role, into acceptance and the first few days, weeks, or months of learning how to perform the role.

Clear, concise, accurate, and timely information during these first steps can make all the difference to retention. If retention is one of your issues, this is a great place to look at making improvements.

Regulatory/Compliance

No matter what business you are in or how small you are, there is likely at least some form of regulatory training that is either required or recommended to reduce risk or liability. If you are not certain what regulations apply to you, it is a good time to connect with professional societies, the chamber of commerce, or a training professional. Not having required training is a liability, and you will likely want to start making improvements here. Here are a few of the acronyms that may govern a part of your business:

EEOC, FSLA, HIPAA, SEC, OSHA, GDPR, CMS, FMLA, EPA, DOT

Job/Task-Specific

This is where you set expectations on how to perform the role or tasks within the role. This is different for each position, but an important part of this type of training is that there is a way to measure that the employee is meeting the expectation.

Creating observable and measurable expectations is important in this space. My common example is this:

The owner or manager says, "I need the new person to answer the phone".

And so they do. By saying, "Ya, what do you want?"

That is not what the owner is looking for. But the expectation was not clear.

Change to a measurable and observable expectation, such as "answers the phone within 3 rings, uses the greeting hello, company name, this is new hire, how may I help you, and asks the client/customer if they can be placed on hold" is much more measurable, observable, and specific. It also set the employee up for success, because they now know what is expected of them.

Personal/Professional

This is a nice to have for some businesses, and a need to have for those who have employees who must maintain continuing education credits for any licensure or certification their role requires.

This can look like continuing education at a conference, attending certifications or workshops off site, providing access to online courses through sites like Coursera or LinkedIn, reimbursement of tuition, or an agreed upon path to move the employee in a vertical or lateral way that helps them grow in their skills.

It can be overwhelming to get training right, aligned, and meeting business needs to be a positive investment. Let us know if we can help.

Training Starts with Process

21 October 2025

This may sound like a lot of extra work. Maybe you only have a handful of employees, and they all know how to do their jobs. As a business owner, you need to think of all the possibilities, including someone leaving, getting ill, and scaling for growth.

What is a Policy?

Think of a policy as a "what" document. What is the expectation? Most companies should have policies on topics such as time and attendance, harassment prevention, or use of technology. These documents allow employees to understand what is expected of their performance and how the company operates. These policies inform the procedures that are written.

What is a Procedure?

Think of the procedure as a "how" document. How do I do what is expected? If there is a time and attendance policy, a clocking in procedure, a requesting time off procedure, or a checking your time off balance procedure follows. These should be shorter documents and provide very clear instruction on how to perform a task. They often have numerated steps.

How does this connect to Training?

Performance-focused training helps employees understand and practice the expectation so they can consistently perform that task. New employees, or employees new to a role, are provided a lot of information. It is not realistic to expect them to remember every step immediately, that comes with time and practice. These documents, especially when stored in an easy to locate area, can be referenced until that muscle memory is formed. Having the expectation documented also allows managers to provide guidance and coaching by referencing a consistent way of performing work.

How does this improve my business?

One of the biggest losses when there is turnover is "tacit" or "institutional" knowledge. Think of someone who has done a job for 15 years. They are the company expert. If anyone has a question, they are the point person and they have the answer. And then they leave. Were any of their answers written down anywhere? Did anyone have them document the thought process or workflow that took place for them to get the solutions? If not, you may have just lost thousands or millions of dollars of knowledge.

Are you having performance issues? Are you thinking of putting an employee on a performance improvement plan? Getting to a root cause or holding an employee accountable is considerably easier if the expectation is documented clearly and easy to locate.

This has an added benefit of creating more consistency, which in turn increases quality.

Having a plan for maintaining and updating knowledge management is a crucial part of a business; and one that is often overlooked or put on a back burner. This is often the case because of a lack of time or confidence in creating the documents. Many templates can be found online, but there are a few key pieces I recommend for these documents.

~Title: should be short and clear (Cleaning the Shop Floor, or Stocking Shelf A in the Warehouse).

~Scope: states to whom the document applies (for warehouse staff, for third shift, for managers).

~Responsibilities: who will do each part of the process/policy (hourly employees will stock, managers will verify inventory).

~Resources/Prerequisites/Safety: this can be anything from tools needed (pallet jack, scanner), to completion of a certification or training (must have up to date fork truck certification before performing), or safety requirements (must wear cut resistant gloves and steel toe boots).

~Instructions: for procedures, a numerated step-by-step walk through of the task allows new employees to make sure they have not skipped any steps (1. open bag of bread 2. remove two pieces 3. place on the counter).

~Images: though not required or even helpful in some cases, this is a good option. In cases where the procedure is longer, it may be more appropriate to create separate job aids. These can be thought of as procedures, but are more focused on the images and often highlight a task that is not performed as often or are more complex and will need to be referenced each time they are performed.

~Version History: A log of updates to the document, when they were updated, and who approved them. This is especially helpful if working toward certifications, such as ISO.

~Contact/Owner: It is helpful to have someone employees can contact if there are questions. This also provides real-time alerts for where updates to documents, or even processes, are needed.

There are many ways that knowledge can be managed. We are here to help.

Training Is Not Always the Answer

28 October 2025

This is one of the most difficult things for an owner to hear.

You have an issue. It could be quality, productivity, attendance, or any other problem with performance. No matter the issue, it costs you money.

You decide to bring an expert in to either implement what you think is the solution, or identify the solution for you. After asking some questions, maybe doing some observation, they tell you the issue is accountability.

Accountability is difficult. It is easy to say a team needs to perform a process better, or to recognise a gap in training that should be filled. It is more difficult to find out you already have all the correct resources in place, but you do not have management that holds employees to those standards.

This is a fix that takes more effort, but will decrease turn over, and increase consistency in the work performed and employee satisfaction.

Training and coaching for managers on how to hold direct reports accountable to meet expectations is an important part of manager training. However, it is so often overlooked. It also requires follow through. This includes establishing and upholding processes for regular check-ins with managers to keep track of performance and provide regular feedback, along with formal processes for addressing below expected performance.

These steps are an investment in time, which means they are a financial investment. However, keeping low performance employees erodes the performance of your top workers. That, combined with unclear expectations increases turn over. The cost to replace an employee is 1.5 times their average salary. Taking these steps is an investment into long term savings and growth.

Getting started can be overwhelming. Schedule an appointment and we can help.

Training Aligns Job Postings Through Evaluations

11 November 2025

Posting a new job opening can be difficult.

This may be a new role and you are not exactly sure what this new person will do. You just know you need more help.

Or, you may need more of your current workforce. You know exactly what they need to do. In either case, this is the first impression for your potential new hire. It is also what they will use a metric for what you expect of them.

Know the role

This is a difficult request for new positions, and many are tempted to list a large number of responsibilities. However, the more you ask of someone, the more you should be willing to pay them. Taking the time to look at what the day to day tasks will be, then any recurring tasks (think weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually), and what tools or technology they must have experience in will guide you to the job description.

How does this align with training?

Once you have a solid job description, you can review and make certain you have training that will cover showing them how to do the tasks you are requesting they perform. You may find out quickly that they are not as skilled as you believed - interviewing is another skill we should discuss later. If they are a good fit, be prepared to upskill their abilities. Making sure this training aligns with the job description helps the new hire not feel as if you are asking them to do something they did not sign up for.

How does that align with evaluations?

You should strive to meet with your direct employees at least once per month; more if you need to provide more consistent direction. These meetings should be used as a time to touch base on the tasks you need them to perform. Giving regular feedback that aligns with the job they signed up for and was trained to do helps them feel confident in their role and makes communication easier if there are times when changes in performance are needed. It also prevents any shock during any wage or bonus updates.